The first thoughts of Hugo Oehler on 1937’s May Days in Barcelona and its ‘lessons.’ Oehler was in Spain representing the Revolutionary Workers League when fighting broke out and would later write ‘Barricades on Barcelona’.

‘The Armed Insurrection of May 3-7 in Barcelona’ by Hugo Oehler from Fourth International (R.W.L.). Vol. 2 No. 12. June, 1937.

(The following is a brief preliminary report from Barcelona. In the next issue we will publish a more detailed analysis. The extraordinary importance of the material and the fact that the capitalist and labor press have combined to conceal the real character of the events which convulsed loyalist Spain from May 5 to 7th make this document the only available report of what took place. Its brevity, however, contains a wealth of political information and analysis, which it will pay the reader well to study closely in the light of the theoretical material previously published by the League on the Spanish Civil War. We have here indisputable proof of the correctness of the analysis and line made by the League.)

Barcelona, May 8, 1937.

Herewith is a brief report on the armed insurrection on May 3-6.

1. The armed clashes in different parts of Catalonia prior to the armed insurrection in Barcelona starting Monday, May 3, was kept secret from the class by all organizations. The CNT and POUM only hinted at these clashes between the Stalinist-socialist and “left” bourgeoisie against the local CNT and POUM and workers.

The CNT and POUM leaderships failed to: 1. present the facts; 2. warn the workers; 3. explain and prepare the class. On the contrary they did everything possible to pacify the workers. The NIN convention documents denied that an armed insurrection was ahead.

2. The CNT and the POUM leadership failed to hold a May Day demonstration in Barcelona although the bourgeois state was afraid knowing what such a demonstration would mean.

3. In spite of those setbacks the armed insurrection started from below by the rank-and-file CNT and POUM members on Monday, May 3rd when the bourgeoisie tried to oust the CNT from control of the telephone building. This happened about 4PM on the 3rd. By nightfall barricades were erected all over Barcelona and its suburbs.

All with arms were on the barricades. There was no organized leadership. The Monday night issues of Solidaridad Obrera, CNT Regional Committee paper came out and told the workers to abandon the streets. Every issue of the Solidaridad added more such betray directions each day.

The Monday night issue of La Battala came out in support of the armed insurrection but called for a solution WITHIN the framework of the Generality. The POUM did not understand that it was a social revolution against the bourgeois state, that dual power and the struggle for full power was on the order of the day.

4. The forces of the Generality, of the exploiters state were the armed guards, Civil and Assault and the PSU the united Stalinist- Socialist Party.

For the first time in history in Europe we have a clear cut example of the Stalinists openly supporting the bourgeois state against an armed insurrection of the proletariat.

Whereas the regional committee of the CNT openly betrayed the workers the POUM centrist line as all centrist lines became REFORMIST in ACTION.

5. All of the workers’ sections of Barcelona and suburbs were in the hands of the armed workers. The Government and the Stalinist controlled the Government Palace, Banks, Plaza Catalonia, Stalinist buildings, etc. The small navy was friendly to the workers. The Mountain Cannon and fort guarding the port were in the hands of the workers. Several Civil Guard barricades laid down arms and surrendered without a shot. The bourgeois forces were hemmed in in the middle of the city, cut off from supplies, but had the radios, etc.

6. No Marxian Party, The Friends of Durutti was the best left organization, but naturally fell short. It opposed the CNT regional committee.

The Barcelona Committee of the CNT opposed the Regional Committee and told the workers to stay on the barricades. Later they capitulated. The rank and file of the CNT and POUM were the best possible. The leadership was the worst possible, although there is a distinction between the CNT and POUM as presented above.

7. Attempt made each day to organize Central Committee of representatives of Barricade Committees as Provisional Committee to call and organize Workers Councils.

Failed Monday. Failed Tuesday. Succeeded Wednesday. But by this time betrayal at the top made it a still birth.

8. Thursday morning La Battala joined the CNT paper in tolling workers to leave the barricades. Situation was still favorable. Thursday night all barricades were manned properly, showing that the workers of the POUM and CNT did not obey their leaders.

Friday morning the work of betrayals from the top broke the movement.

Each night the workers were holding out, each morning the CNT paper told them to leave the barricades and go back to work. Each day this demoralized the ranks. By Thursday the POUM joined the CNT with the same slogans. By Friday they succeeded in getting the workers back to work.

Each day the demoralization in the workers’ ranks was followed by a further consolidation and extension of the bourgeois forces. Saturday the bourgeoisie sent groups of armed guards with fixed bayonets through the workers neighborhoods to inspect, to check.

LESSONS OF THE ARMED INSURRECTION

Positive on Workers Side:

1. Line of demarcation between the loyalist bourgeoisie and the proletariat was very clear. On the bourgeois side the loyalist bourgeois, the Stalinists, Socialists, CNT Regional Committee, POUM as an organization, tail of the right wing anarchists. On the Workers side: the rank and file of the CNT and POUM, Friends of Durruti as an organization. A few Trotskyites were with us.

2. Line of demarcation between leaders and members in two left anti-fascist organizations, CNT and POUM was clearly drawn. Splits are inevitable.

3. It was clearly seen that the Generality is a bourgeois government and not a worker’s government. The People’s Front Government was exposed to masses of workers.

4. The Stalinists were exposed as open counter-revolutionists.

5. Armed insurrection is needed to take power. The capitalist state must be smashed. More workers learned this lesson.

6. Friends of Durutti was the “best” organization. But no Marxian organization existed. Need to work among Friends of Durutti workers.

7. After the event the workers have more arms in hand than before.

8. Section of the bourgeois armed force was disarmed without battle.

Negative factors:

1. Without leadership the fight was entirely DEFENSIVE. It was not transformed into a counter-offensive, although the objective condition for this existed.

2. No new positions were conquered by the workers.

3. The class enemy was allowed to hold the Press and Radio Thich could have been taken from them. (CNT paper and others were burned on the barricades.)

4. Although attempts were made to build one there was no central leadership.

5. Many of the best militants were killed. Saturday La Battala reported about 200 killed on both sides; A report on the Radio two days before said 600 had been killed on both sides. The workers killed the UGT leader who had just been appointed to the new Generality government.

6. There was no adequate literature and propaganda for workers’ interest during the struggle. The best leaflet was distributed by Friends of Durutti. They failed, too.

7. Failure to adequately spread the movement to the rest of Catalonia and Spain and to inform the world workers by Radio.

8. Failure to foresee the armed clash and prepare for it.

The fundamental theoretical lessons, in addition to the above, that must be presented to the class, are:

1. Those who oppose the overthrow of the Generality, the exploiter state are paving the way for Fascism. The enemy says the opposite.

2. A victorious revolution will have to defeat imperialist intervention. The fakers say we must not take power because Valencia, Great Britain, and France will send warships. We say that we must take power to extend the revolution to those countries.

International News was the theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Workers League (first calling themselves the Left Wing Group of the Workers Party), publishers of ‘Fighting Worker.’ It began with the split in the Workers Party in 1935. In 1936 it was renamed ‘Fourth International’ (not to be confused wit the SWP’s theoretical journal of the same name from 1940-56) from 1936 to 1939 and was renamed The Marxist in 1939 which lasted on that year. Fighting Worker was the newspaper of the Revolutionary Workers League from 1936 until 1947. The RWL was a 1935 split from the Workers Party of the U.S. led by James Cannon and allied with the Movement for the Fourth Interntional led by Leon Trotsky. Led by Hugo Oehler and Tom Stamm, the RWL opposed the ‘French Turn’ then happening in world Trotskyism whereby national sections were joining left-moving Socialist Parties. Fighting Worker and the RWL at first positioned themselves as oppositional Trotskyists, but by 1938 refuted Trotsky and his international movement as “degenerate.’, The exact date of Trotsky’s degeneration causing an organizational split between the group’s founders and, for a time, two rival Revolutionary Workers Leagues with papers called Fighting Worker. Oehler went to Spain to make contact with the POUM but was arrested during their suppression. Declaring a rival Provisional International Contact Commission for the New Communist (Fourth) International in 1938, they briefly joined with the Leninist League (UK) and the Revolutionary Communist Organization (Austria). Fighting Worker would be published monthly and then every two weeks in Chicago and New York. After suffering a series of splits in the late 1930s, including of Tom Stamm, the RWL went into decline and Fighting Worker ceased publishing entirely in 1947. In addition to Fighting Worker, the RWL published local, labor, and theoretical papers.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi-rwl/v2n12-jun-1937-FI-RWL.pdf#page=1